Medaka Box

Edit

What would you like to edit?

SynopsisBackgroundAlternative TitlesPictureChapters/VolumesPublishing DatesRelationsTypeExternal Links  

tl;dr: A manga that takes some time before it hits it’s stride, but that becomes a very unique and interesting take on shounen manga when it does.

Medaka Box is a shounen manga written by NISIOISIN, an author well known for a number of novel series of which the most prominent is probably the Monogatari series. Those that are familiar with him know that though he does vary his genres quite a bit, he has a sort of style that permeates across all his works. This too falls into that style, though it takes quite a while before it gets there.

The manga begins with an arc ... that’s centered around introducing the main characters as they begin their high school lives at Hakoniwa Academy. The characters that are focused on vary quite a bit from arc to arc, but the main duo consists of the titular Medaka, the student council president and a girl that’s dedicated herself to helping others who has the abilities to pull off essentially anything, and her childhood friend Zenkichi, a guy that is pretty much normal but manages to somehow keep up with her and stay by her side anyway. This arc is carried by the comedy and fast moving mini-stories about Medaka helping out various others while being absolutely ridiculous. I consider the conclusion of this arc the fight between the student council and public morals committee because while it does start veering into being more action oriented, that’s just a backdrop to show off Medaka’s extreme personality and abilities.

After that it shifts gears quite a bit into being a straight up battle manga, which is a path that’s pretty standard for Shounen Jump manga, start off with some interesting gimmick for some short stories that set things up and then go all in on the action. The problem is that it isn’t a particularly good one. The first fight is against a group called the Thirteen Party, and it involves the student council members going through floors of a building while fighting enemies to ultimately defeat the final boss. There’s some good content here that deals with themes relating to talent, ability, personality, and goals that also helps further flesh out Medaka and hits some good emotional beats, so it’s still solid enough. But the action itself is pretty generic and doesn’t really feel worth the time put into it.

The following arc ends up going even further down the generic battle shounen route, which is tremendously disappointing because it felt like it had the potential to be so much more. It involves fights against what are called Minus, the entire existence of which seems to clash with Medaka’s world view. Their leader, Kumagawa, is an incredibly interesting character that feels like he has a tremendous amount of depth to him in terms of personality and abilities. Unfortunately, it didn’t really feel like it used it all that well as though there were some interesting flashes, it felt like the narrative was being constrained in trying to fit within the mold of a battle shounen manga when it really shouldn’t have been. As such, I consider this the low point of the series.

This portion ends about half way into the series, and thankfully things start to turn around in a big way after that as it feels like Nisio just started doing whatever the hell he wanted with great success. The writing feels much more like what you would expect from Nisio. He flips the table on all the standard shounen tropes used and begins deconstructing them in a pretty elaborate manner. The story gets a lot more meta, at one point breaking the fourth wall so hard it wraps around to not breaking it at all. And the actual genre while all this is happening is random. At times it’ll be heavily character and drama focused, at times it’ll randomly break into playing random elaborate card games, and at times it’ll return to being a battle shounen. However, the key point about the battle shounen parts is that they involve characters that have powers centered around manipulating words, and thus the writing begin to involve another aspect Nisio’s writing is well known for, a steady stream of kanji puns, both comedic and serious, and though probably 90% went over my head and the other 10% I probably can’t appreciate fully, the end result certainly wasn’t generic shounen but something much more unique and interesting.

All through this, the plot itself goes through a lot of unexpected twists and turns and ultimately manages to give both Medaka and Zenkichi really good character arcs. The rest of the cast starts getting somewhat bloated and ultimately I wouldn’t say any of the rest of the cast really had anything all that great, though there definitely were a lot of attempts and some of them were decent. Still, even if they didn’t really have any particularly interesting growth, the cast was still really interesting and had enough variety which combined with the comedy and craziness made it fun to just watch them and find a lot of them likable. The epitome of this is Kumagawa, whose character arc I don’t think was handled all that well, but whom after his first character shift became an incredibly fun and amusing character that it felt impossible not to like tremendously on every page he’s on. All of this ultimately builds up to an ending that drags on a bit, but that ultimately provides an incredibly strong multi-phase epilogue involving everyone that overall leaves a really satisfying aftertaste.

The art was pretty solid in terms of both style and quality. The character designs overall were pretty good though somewhat lacking in variety towards the later stages. Still, the color pages, covers, and some key panels showed off the characters quite well so I would still say the art was pretty good.

[Quick Review] (for the people who don't have the time to read lengthy reviews)

Medaka Box, a manga written by Nisio Isin, is a satire disguised as a Shounen Battle manga. It mocks every aspect of the shounen genre as well as extending its mockery to include even ecchi and "perfect-girl" manga (if such a thing exists). Every part of this manga is intentionally bad and exaggerated to emphasize just how ridiculous and poorly executed most (but not all) shounen manga are.

If you have not read enough shounen, you won't get it.
If you like a lot of shounen, you won't like it.
But if you're open-minded and ... enjoy a good satire, then Medaka Box will be your cup of tea.


[Actual Review] (an over-analysis of the manga for people who have the patience to read lengthy reviews)

This manga is bad. Really bad. The thing is, it intends to be bad. While you lie on your bed, reading the pages that comprise this manga, disgusted at just how generic it is and laughing at how this manga can drive the shounen battle genre to new extremes (extremes that not even Dragon Ball could reach), the manga will be laughing with you. It is self-aware on how awful it is, and actually quite proud of it.

The best part of this manga is its characters.
Medaka is a parody of not just the shounen protagonists, but of perfect-girl characters (most notably Haruhi from TMoHS). She starts off as a perfect little student council president, hell bent to reform everyone who she deems as delinquents, then BOOM, sudden tone change. Medaka is now your usual overpowered protagonist, who gets more and more powerful as the manga progresses. Her perfection makes her into an irritating character (this can be seen as a critique of the shounen heroes).
Hityoshi Zenkichi, Medaka's long time friend, is basically a shounen battle version of Kyon (from TMoHS). He complains about having to be with Medaka, but actually cares. He later becomes the bitch of the series, but I won't get into that.
The rest of the characters are very distinct from each other (a trait Nisio Isin perfected in his continuous quest to create the oddest characters). Although, their distinction can't make up for their lack of depth (another critique on shounen). They fill a singular role (without any groundbreaking development) and function to play that role well at the same time to parody it. The manga also illustrates one of the most basic traits of shounen battle manga, big villains get bigger and badder. Each villain is stronger and more overpowered than the last. Heck, at one point, God was a villain. GOD WAS A VILLAIN. AND GOD WAS HOT! (note that this is not an actual god from any religious text nor any from mythology. Just a chick strong enough to be considered god. A chick who could make Goku her foot stool and Vegeta her jester while nibbling on Luffy cookies).

[. . . .]

And how could I not mention Kumagawa Misogi? In my opinion, his arrival marked the point when Medaka Box became a grand manga. He is a one-dimensional character, the villain of a later arc, and an overall amazing add to the mix. He is the Joker of the manga (that is, if the Joker was a loser.)

The story is a gem in terms of satires. It is the perfect satire of the shounen genre (although perfection in this field doesn't mean that it is good). The first arc establishes the student council, the main characters, and that Medaka is too perfect. That arc demonstrates just how bland shounen can get when setting up. It's so bland you don't need to read it. Just go read a synopsis then skip to the battle part. After that, the story takes a bumpy change in tone, shifting from being a slice-of-life shounen manga, into a battle manga (kinda like KHR). Here's where things pick up. The pacing becomes faster once they introduce Unzen (the first villain) and the manga goes from being unusual to illogical. And it doesn't stop. It gets crazier in the next arc, introducing Kumagawa Misogi, and further demonstrating why the powers in Medaka Box easily trump all other powers in shounen.

But I think I fell in love with this manga after Kumagawa's arc. The arc that follows challenges the Weekly Shounen Jump. It bites the hand that feeds it. It is filled with 4th wall breaking, which is used not just to mock Shounen Jump, but to challenge it. Sure, this arc dragged on for too long, but don't most shounen drag on for way too long? This arc concludes in spectacular fashion with troll-like humor and every trope you pull out of the book of shounen.

[The art is nothing special so I won't talk about it (maybe it was intentionally mediocre?)]

To wrap it all up, I think this manga is a genius at what it does. A masterpiece in terms of manga satires. This alone will not justify how bad the manga is, but is sure as hell makes it worth the read.

Medaka Box


Indeed, this is a bizarre manga and I rarely have such a split opinion about anything I read.

If you're looking for something that has no story whatsoever, is completely dull and stupid in content, full of plot holes, plot armor without end, bad satire, and some of the worst and most irrelevant shounen fighting ever, that this manga is for you!

However, I have to give the author credit for three things that I liked.
1. the development of the characters after the Kumagawa arc, which you could notice more clearly until the end. Some interesting self-reflections and a decent amount of character conflict and ... perspective. This he has to my surprise but not badly implemented, even if it is pulled down by the non-existent Atmosphere and the poor writing. Not to mention that Kumagawa was the best one-sided character in the whole manga anyway and TOO good for this manga.

2) The detail of his explanations, games, and the associated characters and their approaches. There were many interesting strategy duels that, while stupid, had a greater level of creativity.

3. the manga had one of the best epilogues I have ever seen. Especially by its comedy/shounen standards. Everything was shown and combined in this epilogue, time skip, characters, relationships, personalities, and the 100 flowers event was more profound than you would think.


Otherwise, the manga has been almost torture for the most part. It didn't have any dynamics or any tension, it's just empty.


[Story 1]

Not available. And after the Kumagwaw Incident arc, there was no build-up either. The 13-Party Arc and Kumagawa Incident still had minimal buildup and foreshadowing, but that was it. Maybe the existence of Najimi Ajimu was still known. From then on, it seems that there was just improvisation. There were suddenly new abilities, a whole new concept with a banally stupidly bad explanation. Completely new incoherent characters. New sudden end boss and so on.

Honestly, there wasn't anything more, it was just a fight without a break manga from start to finish, where the protagonists had more plot armor than those of "Fairy Tail".

Other than that, it was just 4th Wall jokes being thrown around and constant discussion of the Shounen Jump.


[Character 6]

I hope I never get stoned for this, but Medaka Box had surprisingly positive characters. Not only quite a few personalities (even though there were many stereotypes) but also a lot of development and reflections. Especially with Kumagawa and Medaka, you saw it very well until the end. Kumagawa developed and understood himself. And Medaka wanted to break her shackles of "perfection". You hardly recognize many characters until the end of the manga, after they have been completely rebuilt.

In the beginning, you might say "Medaka" is a boring character who can do everything, but that's true. However, this has been quite an interesting theme for later arcs, where she practically became a "pseudo antagonist" without really changing sides. Only and only so that her too perfect false personality is defeated. Only then could the character unfold after all the demands and expectations of her perfection were broken.


The protagonist Zenkichi was indeed boring even if he also possessed development. He was a hypocrite and ignorant to the end.

And yes, Kumagawa was the best character in the manga, as mentioned. That is so undoubtedly obvious that it almost hurts.



The character still, presentation [ 5]

There's not much to say about this. The drawing style is almost average but still kind of peculiar. The choreography was barely there and the fights and depictions had no dynamics at all. It was almost tiring to read the fights.



Conclusion

Medaka Box is a double-edged sword, either you kind of like him or you hate him. He just tried to do too many things and parody some clichés in the process. Unfortunately, he ended up barely creating anything of his own to rise above the average. So much criticism of the typical "protagonist setting" and "plot armor" cliché, which was also used as a satirical concept. But in the end, the manga was just empty.

By the way, the final fight against Ihiiko was one of the most boring final fights you could have found. The Alphabet cliché was completely pulled off.


Enjoyment [4]